Thrice Armed Part 30

Jordan rose and grabbed his hat before he flung a letter across the table. "Then I'm going for old Leeson now. Hustle, and wire those people that we want an option on that steamboat firm until to-morrow."

He strode out of the office, and when Jimmy reached the street a minute later he saw him running hard in the direction of Leeson's house.

CHAPTER XXII

ASh.o.r.e

It was summer in the north, and now that the bitter wind which had blown thick rain before it had dropped, the clammy fog shut the _Shasta_ in like a wall. She crept through it with engines pounding steadily, swinging to the slow heave of the swell, while Jimmy stood, chilled to the backbone, on his bridge, as he had done for most of the last forty-eight hours. A chart in a gla.s.s case was clamped to the rail in front of him, and Lindstrom, the mate, stooped over it with the moisture trickling from his oilskins.

"This thing is not much good," he said. "The stream moves a different way with the change of wind. Also there is discrepancy in the depth of water."

"There is. If I knew how much to mark off for leeway in that last breeze I'd feel a good deal easier," said Jimmy, who turned to fling a disgusted glance at the chart, upon which little arrows, that indicated the general drifts of the currents, had apparently been scattered promiscuously. Then he raised his voice. "Forward there! See you have a good arming on your lead, and stand by to let go when I take the way off her!"

He pressed down his telegraph and a curious silence followed the clang of the gong when the engines stopped. The _Shasta_ lurched on more slowly into the fog, and when Jimmy swung up his hand a man on the half-seen forecastle loosed the deep-sea lead, while another, perched in the mainmast shrouds, stood intent with a coil of slack line in his hand. There was a splash, the line ran out, and when a sing-song cry came up Jimmy made a little impatient gesture as he turned to the chart.

"A fathom less than we ought to have," he said, and raised his voice.

"What bottom have you got?"

A couple of men were busy hauling in the ponderous lead, and one of them who lifted it turned to the bridge. "Mud, sir," he said. "Soft at that."

Jimmy looked at Lindstrom. "That, at least, is what this thing says. I suppose one ought to bring her up, and wait for a sight, but we can't stay here a week on the odd chance of a blink of clear weather. Anyway, there's plenty water under us, and we'll try the lead again presently."

The mate made a sign of concurrence as Jimmy pressed down his telegraph.

"I was at Kenai four year ago. For two weeks we see nothing. How we get there I cannot tell you, but I think it is by good fortune. Also the skipper come there often for the Commercial Company. You do a thing several times, then you shut your eye, and perhaps you do it again."

He went down the ladder, and Jimmy was left alone except for the silent, shapeless figure in trickling oilskins at the steering wheel. How he had groped his way to St. Michael's near the tremendous desolation of willow swamps about the Yukon mouth he did not exactly know, but he had accomplished it in spite of screaming gale and blinding fog, and the treasure-seekers he had taken up had duly presented him with a written testimonial, which was all they had to give. A few days of clear weather had permitted him to steam across to one of the Commercial Company's factories, but since he left it he had held southward at a venture through thick rain and fog without a single glimpse of any celestial body. That would not have mattered so much had the sea been still as a lake is, for then he could have steered by dead reckoning; but that sea is swept by currents which run for the most part in guessed-at and variable directions, and it was impossible to calculate how far they might have deflected his course for him. In fact, for all he knew, they might have deflected it several times and set it right again. He had cable enough to anchor, but, as he had said, he could not stay there for a week or two on the odd chance of getting an hour's clear weather.

So, since the chart suggested that he was clear of the sh.o.r.e, he went on leisurely, leaning on his bridge-rails chilled in every limb, with the damp trickling off him, while the _Shasta_ bored her way through the woolly vapor, until a little while after the lead had given him a rea.s.suring depth of water she stopped suddenly. Jimmy was flung against the wheel with a violence that drove all the breath out of him, but the next moment he had jumped for his telegraph while everything in the vessel banged and rattled, and the gong clanged out his orders, "Stop her!" and "Hard astern!"

Then while the smooth swell lapped level with one depressed rail the _Shasta_ shook in every plate, and the men who came scrambling to her slanted deck looked at him anxiously. There was, however, no clamor or any sign of undue consternation. The men had almost expected this, and the energy, which for want of direction now and then in such cases leads to purposeless and unreasoning scurry, had been washed out of them.

Jimmy leaned quietly on the rails, and nodded in answer to their glances.

"Yes," he said, "we're hard on. If the propeller won't shake her loose in the next ten minutes, we'll see about laying out an anchor. Mr.

Lindstrom, will you clear the two boats ready, and ask Fleming if there's any more water in his bilges?"

It was twenty minutes before the pounding engines stopped, but the _Shasta_ had not moved an inch astern. The lower side of her lifted as the long gray swell lapped gurgling to her rail, and then came down again; but that was all. In the meanwhile the hand-lead armed with tallow had shown the bottom to be soft, and Fleming quietly reported that there was no sign of any water coming in. Then Jimmy turned to Lindstrom, who once more had climbed to the bridge.

"If this fog lifts and the breeze gets up as usual, she'll certainly break up," he said. "If it doesn't, I don't think there's any reason why we shouldn't heave her off. We'll try it first with the coal in. It's a long way to Wellington, and I don't want to dump a ton if I can help it."

The big Scandinavian went down the ladder, and by and by half the men on board the _Shasta_ were engaged under his direction in las.h.i.+ng a platform of hatch-planks between the two boats that lay beneath the forecastle. The long heave drove them banging against the _Shasta_'s side, and jerked the planks loose as they strove to lash them fast; but at last they accomplished it, and, while the dimness that stands for the Northern summer night crept into the fog, the men on the forecastle head lowered the anchor down. It was of the old, stocked pattern, and though the _Shasta_ was not a large vessel, they found it and the cable which came down after it sufficiently difficult to handle upon a slippery platform that heaved and slanted under them. Still, the thing was done because it was necessary; and with oars splas.h.i.+ng clumsily, because there was little s.p.a.ce for the men who pulled them, they paddled off into the fog.

When they came back the cable was unshackled and the end of it led in through the mooring half-moon on the vessel's stern, and there then remained the second anchor to lay out. The cable of this one was unshackled too, but wire-rope purchases were rigged to the end of it from the after winch, and by the time all was ready it was six o'clock in the morning. The men were worn out, and Jimmy's eyes were heavy with want of sleep, but n.o.body made any demur about facing the further work before him. They knew what would happen if the fog lifted and the breeze that rolled it back should find the _Shasta_ there.

Jimmy pressed down the telegraph on his bridge. Winch and windla.s.s groaned and rattled, the wire-rope screamed, and the clanking cable tightened suddenly. Then the thudding propeller shook the s.h.i.+p until she quivered like a thing in pain each time the smooth swell lifted one side of her. Steam drifted about her, wire and cable were drawn rigid, but she would not budge an inch in spite of them, and Jimmy's face was a trifle grim when he flung up his hand. The thud of the propeller slackened, and there was a silence that was almost oppressive when winch and windla.s.s stopped. The gurgle of the gray swell about the steamer's plates and the drip of moisture from the slanted shrouds emphasized it.

Then Jimmy signed to one of the men.

"Send Mr. Fleming here," he said.

The man disappeared, and the engineer looked grave when he climbed to the bridge.

"You'll be wanting to dump my coal now?" he asked. "How are you going to take her home without it?"

"There is a good deal of heavy timber right down the West Coast," said Jimmy dryly. "There are also quite a few inlets into which one could take a steamer."

"You can't feed a boiler furnace with four-foot-diameter pines."

"They can be sawn and split. Besides, there are probably smaller ones among those four-foot pines. They don't grow that size in a year or two."

The engineer made a last protest. "I'm aware that it won't be much use, but it's my duty to point out the difficulties. You can't saw those trees without a big cross-cut, and I'm not sure what my boiler tubes will do under a stream of resinous flame."

"Well," said Jimmy thoughtfully, "I think I could make some kind of cross-cut out of a thin plate if I were an engineer. In fact, I'd make two, and keep a man filing up one of them while I used the other. Then I'd pump my feed-water rather higher than usual about those tubes."

"You can't pump water round the back-end," said the engineer. "You're going to see that resin flame make a hole in the back plate of the combustion chamber."

He stopped, and smiled when Jimmy looked at him. "Well, now that I've told you, I'll start every man to dumping the coal over."

Worn out as they were, the men worked feverishly until noon. Some panted at the ash-hoist, some standing on slippery iron ladders pa.s.sed the heavy baskets from one to another, and the rest toiled amidst the stifling dust that streamed from the bunkers. Those who could see it were sincerely glad that the fog still hung about them--clammy, impenetrable, and apparently as solid as a wall.

Then it commenced to stir a little and slide past the vessel in filmy wisps, and it seemed to Jimmy that the smooth gray swell which lapped about her was getting steeper. Once or twice, indeed, it overlapped her depressed rail, and poured on board in a long green cascade. He knew that meant the breeze had already awakened somewhere not far away, and that when the sea that it was stirring up came down on them it would not take it very long to knock the bottom out of the _Shasta_. So did the men, and they toiled the harder, until when the bunkers were almost empty Jimmy once more stopped them.

"Stand by winch and windla.s.s. We have to heave her off inside the next hour," he said. "Tell Mr. Fleming to shake her with the propeller, and give you all the steam he can."

The engines pounded, the sea boiled white beneath the _Shasta_'s stern, and wire and studded cable screamed and groaned above the clamor of the winch and the thudding of the screw. For thirty long minutes, during which the uproar ceased for a moment or two once or twice, the _Shasta_ did not move at all, and Jimmy felt his heart thump under the tension, while a cold breeze whipped his face. Then he thrust down his telegraph, and his voice reached the men on the forecastle harshly when the engines stopped.

"You have to do it now, or tear the windla.s.s out. I'll give you all the steam," he said.

The men understood why haste was necessary. The fog no longer slid past them but whirled by in ragged streaks, and the wind that drove it came up out of the wastes of the Pacific. Already the long swell was flecked with little frothing ridges, and there was no need to tell any of those who glanced at it anxiously that it would break across the stranded vessel in an hour or two. Some of them stood by clanking windla.s.s and banging winch, while the rest swabbed the creaking wire with grease and rubbed engine tallow on guide and block where it would ease the strain.

For five minutes they worked in silence, and then a shout went up as the winch-drum that had spun beneath the wire took hold and reeled off a foot or two of it. The _Shasta_ swung herself upright as a big gray heave capped with livid white rolled in, and a curious quiver ran through her before she came down on one side again. The roar of the jet of steam that rushed aloft from beside her funnel grew almost deafening, but Jimmy's voice broke faintly through the din.

"Lindstrom," he said, "tell Mr. Fleming he can turn the steam he daren't bottle down on to his engines."

Then a sonorous pounding, and the thud of the screw joined in; and by the time the jet of steam had died away, the _Shasta_ was quivering all through, while her masts stood upright and did not slant back again. Her windla.s.s was also slowly gathering the clanking cable in, until at last it rattled furiously as she leaped astern. Then a hoa.r.s.e shout of exultation went up, and Jimmy drew in a deep breath of relief as he strode across his bridge.

"Heave right up to your kedge and break it out," he said. "Then we'll let her swing, and get the stream anchor when she rides to it ahead."

It meant an hour's brutal labor overhauling hard wire tackles and leading forward ponderous chain, but they undertook it light-heartedly, with bleeding hands and broken nails, while the _Shasta_ heaved and rolled viciously under them. Then, when they broke out the stream anchor under her bows, Jimmy sighed from sheer satisfaction as he pressed down his telegraph to "Half-speed ahead."

"We wouldn't have done it in another hour, Lindstrom," he said. "We'll drive her west a while to make sure of things before we put her on her course again; and in the meanwhile you'll keep the hand-lead going."

It gave them steadily deepening water, until the sea piled up and the _Shasta_ rolled her rail under, so that the man strapped outside the bridge could do no more than guess at the soundings; and Jimmy told him to come in. Then he turned to Lindstrom.

"I'll have to let up now," he said; "I can't keep my eyes open."

He lowered himself down the ladder circ.u.mspectly, and found it somewhat difficult to reach the room beneath the bridge; but five minutes after he got there he was sleeping heavily.